Have you a ‘golden’ child?
IT’S ONE of the worst-kept secrets of family life — most mums and dads have a favourite. They will deny it, and, very often, so will the favourites, but the unfavoured ones know. They always know.
Admitting to having a favourite child is one of the biggest parenting taboos but, according to research by US psychologist Karl Pillemer, many families have a golden child.
In one survey Pillemer found about 30% of adult children believed their mother always had a favourite, and, when he asked parents, about 15% admitted to preferring one child over another.
It does make a difference — the impact on both favoured and unfavoured is significant, according to child and adolescent cognitive behavioural psychologist Clare Davenport.
Being the favourite can give ‘golden’ children a sense of entitlement, make them arrogant and cause relationship problems in both home and workplace.
Unfavoured siblings tend to grow up with a feeling of being not good enough, not being wanted and being significantly “less than” the favoured sibling, she says. This can damage self-esteem and even contribute to depression:
“If you have an innate tendency to suffer from depression, the presence of a favourite in the family can exacerbate it. Self-esteem would be affected.”
On the other hand, says Davenport, not being a favourite can make you more self-sufficient and determined to fight your own corner.
Research shows that children who have never felt the affirmation of being the ‘chosen one’ can become deeply insecure, spend their lives searching for this validation, futilely looking to others to choose them as they hoped their parents would.
The writer Charles Dickens was deeply hurt when his family could only afford to send his older sister to school while he worked in a boot-blacking factory. Even as a hugely successful author, the pain of it never left him.
The Kardashian girls caused a stir last Christmas when they admitted to Barbara Walters on live TV that Kim was their mum’s favourite.
However, for psychologist and author Dr Patrick Ryan, being the favourite definitely had a downside:
“I was the eldest of three boys and I was very much the favoured son. I was the oldest and seen as the brightest and best,” he recalls.
It wasn’t much fun, he says:
“It became a bit like being a puppet — your identity becomes enmeshed with the expectations of your parents and you spend your childhood living up to their expectations because that’s how you get your reward. Your identity becomes their expectations.”
The problems really begin, he observes, when you start to believe that you’re the best:
“If you think you’re the best and suddenly you don’t get a particular job, or you’re refused promotion, then your bubble is pricked and you’re open to anxiety and self-esteem issues.”
He admits that at one stage he was quite arrogant, but “life and my own open-ness to learning” led him to a more balanced perspective.
Anxiety and depression can result from being either the favourite or being un-favoured, says Ryan, now author of a number of books and director of the Doctoral Programme in Clinical Psychology at the University of Limerick.
Either way, he explains, your “true authentic self” is not being nurtured: “You’re not allowed to be who you really are and when that happens your self-esteem and self-worth becomes fragile.”
A favourite’s sense of superiority and entitlement are based on shaky foundations, he warns, but this also applies to the un-favoured siblings.
“Paradoxically you end up with the same result, even though the popular belief is that it’s better if you’re the favoured child.”
The effects begin in childhood when less favoured children internalise the message of inadequacy:
“Self-esteem is affected. It becomes fragile and often defined by external achievement and external praise.
“Not being the favourite is about feeling not quite right in the world, not being able to find your place, it’s about not being content and being unable to derive satisfaction from the ordinary experiences in life. It will stay with you unless you do something about it.”
A favoured child, however, can eventually become distanced from the family.
“If there’s a real sense of superiority inculcated in the favourite, the favourite will come to judge the parents and everyone else to be inferior because that is what he has been trained to do.”
Look at Hitler, Mao Tse Tung or Stalin, he says: “All of these people had massive egos because key people around them thought they were bigger than everyone else and they fed into that.”
Eventually, he says, even the people who ‘care’ for the favoured ones can become despised figures because they’re so obviously not superior.
With seven children, ranging in age from five to 21, Dr Kate Byrne does her utmost to treat them all equally.
“I would be emotionally closer to some of them than to others,” she admits. “I love them all equally but I’d have a very good connection with my nine-year-old son Daragh, for instance, because we seem to be on the same wavelength and our likes and dislikes are very similar.” At different times her relationship with different sons can be closer or more distant, “depending on their stage of development.” However, she acknowledges that there are favourites in many families.
Byrne believes it may be based around emotional bonding or common interests, or that a particular child is more compliant, so the parent will spent more time with the child who gives them less grief.
“As a parent you simply may prefer a child but you should try to overcome those feelings — and that’s not the easiest thing on the planet.”
Make all your children favourites, suggests Ryan, who refers to a bedside story where the oldest child is the ‘favourite oldest’ child and the middle child is the ‘favourite middle’ child and the youngest child is the ‘favourite youngest’ child.
Don’t give time and effort to one over another, he counsels:
“Try to remember the good in each child. Catch what works and use it again,. Mol an Óige agus tiocfaidh siad!”
NOT only did *Elizabeth’s mother declare that she hadn’t wanted her, she described how she did everything possible to secretly abort her.
“I was the second of five children and my mother didn’t want to be pregnant with me. When I was 13 she explained that she had done everything she could think of to lose me — she went out on her bicycle heavily pregnant, took hot baths and drank gin, etc. She said she tried all the old wives’ methods, because she just didn’t want to be pregnant with me.
“I think I came too soon after my older sister Valerie and she couldn’t cope as she felt Valerie was enough to look after.”
Valerie was very much the golden child, says Elizabeth, now in her fifties.
“My mother talked to people about Val as if she was an angel, but I heard her talk about me as if I was mad, sad and bad. Valerie could do nothing wrong and I could do nothing right.”
The three boys in the family seemed to pass unscathed, but Elizabeth endured a barrage of criticism.
“If anything was broken or went missing in the house she would assume I was to blame. Even when I was grown-up, married and had my own children, she would accuse me of taking things!”
“Valerie has grown up with an overweening sense of entitlement and is amazingly self-righteous.
“She always believes she’s right about everything and felt she was entitled to everything my parents had to give — love, money, attention, gifts, because my mother bred that attitude into her.
“I have been very successful in my professional career. My sister is a clerical assistant.”
As a child Elizabeth never stopped trying to win her mother’s affection:
“I was always cooking and cleaning and painting and wallpapering, trying to be liked by being helpful ... But it also made me very resilient as a person. When I grew up I went into therapy and this was very helpful because it made me realise that I was not the problem. It also taught me how to deal with it.
“I believe that being the favourite turned her into someone who was both avaricious and mean. Although my parents were so good to her, she didn’t take care of them in their old age.
“She lacks compassion and empathy and has no sense of gratitude because she thinks she is entitled to everything.
“When our parents died, Valerie got nearly everything, including their house. The boys got whatever was left over. I got nothing. I wasn’t even mentioned in the will. But I have fabulous friends and a great career and a smashing husband who is always there for me, and fabulous kids who did very well and are all happily married and very successful in their own lives. I think I did better in the long run!”
* Not her real name
The favouritism in Terry Prone’s family was, she observes, a mild background music to a happy childhood.
Prone’s older sister Hilary was their dad’s favourite, while Terry became very close to their mum, who, she recalls was deeply supportive of her.
“I think it was Einstein who said that a man with the unequivocal support of his mother can do anything — I felt that! But she knew what I was capable of and didn’t tolerate slacking. But it is important to say that favouritism wasn’t an issue. It was a kind of background music.
“I was born happy and if anything made me supported and have good self-esteem, it was Hilary in school.
“Hilary presented me as if she was a concert promoter and as if I was a genius and a star. Which is rare among siblings. Dunno why Hil was dad’s favourite. I never questioned it.”
Her sister, says Prone, is extremely generous, fiercely clever — “with millions of degrees” — and very kind.
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